Leadership and voice: more than add women and stir

Why is women’s leadership and voice important? Why is it relevant to WASH?
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Why is women’s leadership and voice important? Why is it relevant to WASH?
What is women’s empowerment? How do you measure it? Why is it relevant to the WASH?
Empowerment, and more specifically women’s empowerment, is among the most fuzzy concepts within international development. This article looks at how it has evolved drawing on key international feminist thinkers, concluding that women’s empowerment is best understood as a process rather than an end goal, where marginalised women are able to set their own political agendas, to access resources, form movements and achieve lasting change in gender and social power structures.
What is intersectionality? How can you apply it in practice? What relevance does it have for WASH?
This short article delves into some of the key proponents and literature that gave rise to the concept of intersectionality, the debates that informed its evolution and use, and shares some insights on how to “ask the other question” to inform more nuanced development approaches.
The virtual conference on Menstrual Hygiene Management in Schools is an annual event that enables global sharing of new ideas and 'lessons learned', and connects people working on MHM in schools in a wide range of countries. The 7th virtual conference was held on 30 October 2018 as part of the Water & Health Conference, hosted by the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the USA. The presenters covered work on MHM that spanned countries and regions across the world, identifying shared challenges in programme design, implementation, and monitoring.
Women and girls often bear primary responsibility for providing drinking water and sanitation within their families and as a result are disproportionately affected when they have to travel to reach these services/facilities and take time to maintain them. Improved sanitation access is crucial to preserving the basic dignity of women and girls and reducing gender-based violence.
In Vietnam, many women face challenges accessing water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services and facilities; lack of funds and information, exclusion from decision-making, poorly designed facilities along with restrictive gender norms all create barriers.
Hanh Nguyen Hong (Thrive Networks/East Meets West) talks about how the Women-Led Output Based Aid (WOBA) programme in Vietnam is overcoming these barriers by facilitating gender transformative WASH.
In Vietnam, many women face challenges accessing WASH services and facilities; lack of funds and information, exclusion from decision-making, poorly designed facilities along with restrictive gender norms all create barriers.
WaterAid has launched this ‘Equality and Inclusion Toolkit’ to help WASH practitioners leave no on behind. It introduces the most important equality, non-discrimination and inclusion principles, and includes practical activities, tools and checklists for you to apply to your work with partners and communities.
This toolkit, available in English, Portuguese and French gives real examples and many practical tools for all stages of the programme cycle and advocacy work.